The Handmaid's Tale(29)

They won’t have destroyed that.


We turn our backs to the Wall, head left. Here there are several empty storefronts, their glass windows scrawled with soap. I try to remember what was sold in them, once. Cosmetics? Jewellery? Most of the stores carrying things for men are still open; it’s just the ones dealing in what they call vanities that have been shut down.

At the corner is the store known as Soul Scrolls. It’s a franchise: there are Soul Scrolls in every city centre, in every suburb, or so they say. It must make a lot of profit.

The window of Soul Scrolls is shatterproof. Behind it are printout machines, row on row of them; these machines are known as Holy Rollers, but only among us, it’s a disrespectful nickname. What the machines print is prayers, roll upon roll, prayers going out endlessly. They’re ordered by Compuphone, I’ve overheard the Commander’s Wife doing it. Ordering prayers from Soul Scrolls is supposed to be a sign of piety and faithfulness to the regime, so of course the Commanders’ Wives do it a lot. It helps their husbands’ careers.

There are five different prayers: for health, wealth, a death, a birth, a sin. You pick the one you want, punch in the number, then punch in your own number so your account will be debited, and punch in the number of times you want the prayer repeated.

The machines talk as they print out the prayers; if you like, you can go inside and listen to them, the toneless metallic voices repeating the same thing over and over. Once the prayers have been printed out and said, the paper rolls back through another slot and is recycled into fresh paper again. There are no people inside the building: the machines run by themselves. You can’t hear the voices from outside; only a murmur, a hum, like a devout crowd, on its knees. Each machine has an eye painted in gold on the side, flanked by two small golden wings.

I try to remember what this place sold when it was a store, before it was turned into Soul Scrolls. I think it was lingerie. Pink and silver boxes, coloured pantyhose, brassieres with lace, silk scarves? Something lost.

Ofglen and I stand outside Soul Scrolls, looking through the shatterproof windows, watching the prayers well out from the machines and disappear again through the slot, back to the realm of the unsaid. Now I shift my gaze. What I see is not the machines, but Ofglen, reflected in the glass of the window. She’s looking straight at me.

We can see into each other’s eyes. This is the first time I’ve ever seen Ofglen’s eyes, directly, steadily, not aslant. Her face is oval pink, plump but not fat, her eyes roundish.

She holds my stare in the glass, level, unwavering. Now it’s hard to look away. There’s a shock in this seeing; it’s like seeing somebody naked, for the first time. There is risk, suddenly, in the air between us, where there was none before. Even this meeting of eyes holds danger. Though there’s nobody near.

At last Ofglen speaks. “Do you think God listens,” she says, “to these machines?” She is whispering: our habit at the Centre.

In the past this would have been a trivial enough remark, a kind of scholarly speculation. Right now it’s treason.

I could scream. I could run away. I could turn from her silently, to show her I won’t tolerate this kind of talk in my presence. Subversion, sedition, blasphemy, heresy, all rolled into one.

I steel myself. “No,” I say.

She lets out her breath, in a long sigh of relief. We have crossed the invisible line together. “Neither do I,” she says.

“Though I suppose it’s faith, of a kind,” I say. “Like Tibetan prayer wheels.”

“What are those?” she asks.

“I only read about them,” I say. “They were moved around by the wind. They’re all gone now.”

“Like everything,” she says. Only now do we stop looking at one another.

“Is it safe here?” I whisper.

“I figure it’s the safest place,” she says. “We look like we’re praying, is all.”

“What about them?”

“Them?” she says, still whispering. “You’re always safest out of doors, no mikes, and why would they put one here? They’d think nobody would dare. But we’ve stayed long enough. There’s no sense in being late getting back.” We turn away together. “Keep your head down as we walk,” she says, “and lean just a little towards me. That way I can hear you better. Don’t talk when there’s anyone coming.”

We walk, heads bent as usual. I’m so excited I can hardly breathe, but I keep a steady pace. Now more than ever I must avoid drawing attention to myself.

“I thought you were a true believer,” Ofglen says.

“I thought you were,” I say.

“You were always so stinking pious.”

“So were you,” I reply. I want to laugh, shout, hug her.

“You can join us,” she says.

“Us?” I say. There is an us then, there’s a we. I knew it.

“You didn’t think I was the only one,” she says.

I didn’t think that. It occurs to me that she may be a spy, a plant, set to trap me; such is the soil in which we grow. But I can’t believe it; hope is rising in me, like sap in a tree. Blood in a wound. We have made an opening.

I want to ask her if she’s seen Moira, if anyone can find out what’s happened, to Luke, to my child, my mother even, but there’s not much time; too soon we’re approaching the corner of the main street, the one before the first barrier. There will be too many people.

“Don’t say a word,” Ofglen warns me, though she doesn’t need to. “In anyway.”

“Of course I won’t,” I say. Who could I tell?


We walk the main street in silence, past Lilies, past All Flesh. There are more people on the sidewalks this afternoon than usual: the warm weather must have brought them out. Women, in green, blue, red, stripes; men too, some in uniform, some only in civilian suits. The sun is free, it is still there to be enjoyed. Though no one bathes in it any more, not in public.

There are more cars too, Whirlwinds with their chauffeurs and their cushioned occupants, lesser cars driven by lesser men.


Something is happening: there’s a commotion, a flurry among the shoals of cars. Some are pulling over to the side, as if to get out of the way. I look up quickly: it’s a black van, with the white-winged eye on the side. It doesn’t have the siren on, but the other cars avoid it anyway. It cruises slowly along the street, as if looking for something: shark on the prowl.

I freeze, cold travels through me, down to my feet. There must have been microphones, they’ve heard us after all.

Ofglen, under cover of her sleeve, grips my elbow. “Keep moving,” she whispers. “Pretend not to see.”

But I can’t help seeing. Right in front of us the van pulls up. Two Eyes, in grey suits, leap from the opening double doors at the back. They grab a man who is walking along, a man with a briefcase, an ordinary-looking man, slam him back against the black side of the van. He’s there a moment, splayed out against the metal as if stuck to it; then one of the Eyes moves in on him, does something sharp and brutal that doubles him over, into a limp cloth bundle. They pick him up and heave him into the back of the van like a sack of mail. Then they are inside also and the doors are closed and the van moves on.

It’s over, in seconds, and the traffic on the street resumes as if nothing has happened.

What I feel is relief. It wasn’t me.





CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT


I don’t feel like a nap this afternoon, there’s still too much adrenalin. I sit on the window seat, looking out through the semi-sheer of the curtains. White nightgown. The window is as open as it goes, there’s a breeze, hot in the sunlight, and the white cloth blows across my face. From the outside I must look like a cocoon, a spook, face enshrouded like this, only the outlines visible, of nose, bandaged mouth, blind eyes. But I like the sensation, the soft cloth brushing my skin. It’s like being in a cloud.

They’ve given me a small electric fan, which helps in this humidity. It whirs on the floor, in the corner, its blades encased in grill-work. If I were Moira, I’d know how to take it apart, reduce it to its cutting edges. I have no screwdriver, but if I were Moira I could do it without a screwdriver. I’m not Moira.

What would she tell me, about the Commander, if she were here? Probably she’d disapprove. She disapproved of Luke, back then. Not of Luke but of the fact that he was married. She said I was poaching, on another woman’s ground. I said Luke wasn’t a fish or a piece of dirt either, he was a human being and could make his own decisions. She said I was rationalizing. I said I was in love. She said that was no excuse. Moira was always more logical than I am.

I said she didn’t have that problem herself any more, since she’d decided to prefer women, and as far as I could see she had no scruples about stealing them or borrowing them when she felt like it. She said it was different, because the balance of power was equal between women so sex was an even-steven transaction. I said “even-steven” was a sexist phrase, if she was going to be like that, and anyway that argument was outdated. She said I had trivialized the issue and if I thought it was outdated I was living with my head in the sand.